


What Dreams Are Made Of

by AellaIrene



Category: The Lost Fleet - Jack Campbell, Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: Crossover, F/M, Future Fic, The more things change
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-20
Updated: 2011-07-20
Packaged: 2017-10-21 14:20:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/226155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AellaIrene/pseuds/AellaIrene
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Geary is a dangerous man. And who better to recognise it than Mad Miles Vorkosigan's daughter?</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Dreams Are Made Of

**Author's Note:**

> Set some thirty years after [With A Whimper](http://archiveofourown.org/works/217419), and during _Fearless_.
> 
> Beta by booknerdguru

John Geary is a dangerous man.

And the worst of it is, he doesn’t even realise it. From anyone else, Victoria would think that they were lying, or stupid, but Geary is neither. Just hopelessly naive. Even with all the evidence in front of him, he can’t quite believe that anyone would betray the Alliance government, would cast them down and raise him to the head. Victoria can, quite easily. The only man she’s ever met more charismatic than Geary was her father, and Mad Miles Vorkosigan once liberated a prison camp stark naked. And she is more ready to predict violence, to suspect an assassin from behind, more ready even than her colleagues.

She has scars, beneath her hair, to remind her of what happens when you grow complacent. When you think that such a thing could not possibly happen. The Alliance is several hundred years ahead of Barrayar, with democracy and peaceful transitions of power, but the Alliance is stretched to breaking point. If they hadn’t been, Victoria doesn’t think she would ever have gained power: her records do say that she wasn’t born in the Callas Republic, even if they don’t go so far as to say she was born in another universe, that Victoria Rione isn’t even her birth name.

She’s been Victoria Rione almost twice as long as she was Taura Vorkosigan, and only her sister Elizabeth still calls her Taura, as if she can turn Victoria back into the scared teenager she once was.

No. That’s unfair. Elizabeth just wanted her to stay on Barrayar, or at least on Beta. She never understood how both of them stifled her: in Barrayar she had no opportunities, in Beta she had no air.

In the Callas Republic, she has both, and once, she had a man she loved. Even now, with Paol dead ten years, she still can’t go back to Barrayar.

 _Especially_ now, not with the Emperor Gregor dead as well, her sister Helen constructing contingency plans to get her daughter off-planet, her brother Nikki and her mother both taking consulting jobs that co-incidentally put them on the other side of the Nexus, on planets which have been stubborn about extraditions to Barrayar. The Vorkosigans have ever been loyal, but, as her Uncle Ivan mutters, if one of them tried to hide their light beneath a bushel, the bushel would burst into flame.

Victoria’s been out of contact with Barrayar for over a year, and she’s trying very hard not to think about what might be happening there. When she prays to her ancestors, she doesn’t pray _Get me home safe_ , she prays _Let them be safe_.

She trusts in John Geary to get her home. It is an odd feeling. She hasn’t trusted anyone in a long time, not this way. She has had allies, most of them political, but she made her friends in Project Starbright, and the ones who didn’t die with Paol died soon afterwards, more casualties of this endless war.

She still loves the Republic more than she will ever love Barrayar.

Victoria imagines leaning over John Geary, one night when he is sleeping beside her, and saying “I trust you like I trust my family.”

She doesn’t think he’d understand. Even Paol didn’t, quite, but Paol was willing to try, was willing to take everything Lizzie threw at him, because Lizzie was her sister, and he didn’t want to make her choose.

John Geary, Victoria thinks, is going to get them home. And then John Geary will be more powerful than he can possibly imagine. And it will be up to Victoria to make sure that he does not die, as her father did, is not used by others for their own ends. Even if that other is the lurking spectre of Black Jack.

Once upon a time, Victoria looked down at her father’s face, and said “Yes, sir, Admiral Naismith, sir,” and saw his face go blank as he realised that he was hustling his own daughter. It’s all degrees. Maybe between them, she and John Geary can imprison Black Jack.

If they can’t, well. Her knife was intended for Admiral Bloch, but it will do as well for another megalomaniac fool.

John Geary is a dangerous man, but Victoria is a dangerous woman, as others have found to their cost.

Maybe it will be enough.


End file.
